MURDER BY DEATH (1976)

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Positive Experience/Entertaining? Wow, not really. I watched this a bunch of times as a little kid and remember loving it but as an adult, it had its moments but was surprisingly unfunny.


Technically any good? It's a send-up of famous movie detectives and tries to take them to task for their various foibles--whether it's Charlie Chan's inability to speak proper English (despite his brilliance) or Miss Marple's inability to let us in on what she knows before she names the killer (or was it Poirot who did that?). Either way, you can't fault the acting--well, except for Truman Capote who was amusing, in his own way. The rest of the cast is stunning--David Niven, Peter Sellers, James Cromwell, Maggie Smith, and more, believe it or not (Alex Guiness!!) all did wonderful jobs.

While this movie does have flashes of true inspiration, I have a feeling the script was written at a point in Neil Simon's life when he was riding off of the success of other projects. The plot feels weakly pulled together and while I get that the ending isn't supposed to make sense, that doesn't stop it from being stupid. If you want to make something not make sense in your movie, fine, but you can't have not make sense inside the universe of the story. The sets looked great, though. :)


How did it leave me feeling? Disappointed. I think I was very easy to please as a kid.


Final Rating? DNS - Do Not See. I'm no fan of Clue but I think I laughed more at that then I did at Murder By Death. Sad to say, I guess.

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Orignal From: MURDER BY DEATH (1976)